Keys Marine Lab: Pt. 1

Key West is the southernmost point in the continental United States and has been a tourist hub since the early 1900's when Henry Flagler completed the infamous Florida East Coast Railway. This railway ran from here in Jacksonville, Florida all the way down to Key West. This railway essentially allowed for the keys to become one of the wealthiest places in the country due to its incomparable beauty, a beauty I got to see for myself during my stay at the Keys Marine Lab on Long Key.

The Keys Marine Lab was one of the coolest places I've stayed during my travels throughout Florida. It lay adjacent to the Florida Bay with a beautiful sea grass meadow filled with spiny lobster, spaghetti worms and even a nurse shark. KML acts as a sort of nursery for the juvenile lobster who must one day make the treacherous journey to the reef.

On the boat

On our first day in the keys we began with a boat ride to 3 offshore reef sites: Eleven Foot Mound, Long Key Ledge, and Elbow Reef. The biodiversity seen in these reefs was unparalleled to any site I had seen before, though the week was full of surprises in that each day we saw sites which were richer than the foregoing day. Though on this first day I was unable to identify most things I saw I was astounded by the beauty and biodiversity of the fish, soft coral, scleractinians, sponges and macroalgae present. After returning to KML we finished the evening with a short lecture about the basics of coral reef systems and discussed what we had seen.

Outside Koch Key

On Tuesday we ventured to a mangrove island known as Koch Key in the Everglades National Park protected area. We snorkeled through, around and under the mangroves that the island was composed of. There was quite an abundance of juvenile fish swimming in schools of thousands, as well as many larger fish, such as the mangrove or grey snapper. Spiny lobsters also made in appearance hiding between the prop roots. The island was surrounded with sea grass meadows primarily made up of manatee grass, or Syringodium filiforme, as well as small sponges and algae. Then we went to another sea grass meadow, this time made up of a mixture of manatee grass and turtle grass (Thalassia Testudinium). While here we collected invertebrates. Some of the species I fond include an octopus no bigger than a golf ball, a whelk, and a few hermit crabs.  Once we returned to KML we concluded the evening with a lecture about fish identification where Dr. Voss informed us about the 50 most abundant fish.

Lobster